For the span of her career, artist Imelda Cajipe Endaya has been known for her representational artistic style. She creates images that are clearly recognizable for what they purport to be.
From 1960s to 1970s, Cajipe-Endaya and other Filipino artists pioneered the search for the Filipino identity in culture and the art. Along with this search came the integration of the findings and insights into her artworks, which eventually became her trademark.
But there was a time when the artist produced timelessly elegant and stunning modern prints that went beyond the normal styles during the 1970s to late 1990s.
The Abstractions of Cajipe-Endaya exhibit at Imahica Art reveals a different facet of the renowned painter and printmaker. The print collection shows her abstract side and style, which not many people know about.
In this solo exhibit, the artist shares with the public her hidden interest as an artist – her love for experimenting with abstraction.
The various sophisticated prints in limited edition are abstracted interpretations of objects commonly related to the Filipino identity and everyday life, which Cajipe Endaya executes playfully.
Among these are salted eggs, rice paddies, archeological diggings, fiesta buntings, indigenous patterns, and Filipino landscapes – all deconstructed, abstracted, and simplified using painstaking, labor intensive, and complex printmaking processes such as etching, aquatint, and collagraph.
Her cosmopolitan and contemporary style peppered with quaint Filipino touches will appeal to the global Filipinos, particularly the millennials, in this digital age.
One of the most renowned painters and printmakers in the Philippines, Imelda realized she had the talent for drawing while she was a grade school at the College of the Holy Spirit. She later graduated with a degree in visual communication from UP College of Fine Arts.
While working as a researcher on special projects with the National Library and other institutions, she was exposed to more knowledge of Philippine history. This serves as an inspiration for her works.
Some of her works can be seen at Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the National Museum of the Philippines, the Met Museum of Manila, and Ateneo Arete. Security Bank Corporation, PLDT, and BDO are among the financial institutions that have acquired her works for their collection. Internationally, one can look at her works at the National Gallery of Singapore and the Okinawa Prefectural Museum, Fukuoka Art Museum.
If you want to see her usual representational art style, she will have a retrospective exhibition this September at the CCP Main Gallery. Imelda-Cajipe-Endaya: Pagtutol at Pag-Asa will be the first retrospective exhibit of the CCP Thirteen Artists awardee. It will open on September 3, right after the Cinemalaya film fest.
But for now, you have two more days, until August 12 to visit us at Imahica Art, located 2/F Lee Gardens, Shaw Blvd., Old Wack-Wack, Mandaluyong. For more information, call 0917-894 5646 or 7622-4008 or email thegallery@imahica.art.